LITMIR.BIZ

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you. I guess.’ She sounded bitter. She shouted across at her husband, who was about to lock up, ‘Leave it! It doesn’t matter anyhow. Right?’ She looked at TK for confirmation, of more things than he suspected he was able to give. But he tried anyway.

      ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, solemn. ‘Good luck.’

      ‘Ha!’ she said. ‘You’re the one who’s staying.’

      ‘All right?’ the husband called over.

      The car doors slammed, but they left the house open for the dusk to go creeping in – along with any shameless opportunists who happened to be hanging around.

      TK waited until the U-Haul lights had disappeared round the corner before heading in and locking the door behind him. Flicked the light switch, but the electricity was already cut off and he took the executive decision, one he regrets now, with the noises coming from the kitchen, to wait till morning to see what was left.

      Something shatters. Glass or crockery. Which makes TK think it’s not a looter. He doesn’t like to use that word. That implies theft, and he’s never stolen a thing in his life, not even when he was a kid and all fucked up. He’s in asset reclamation and redistribution. Also career consultation, IT support, peer counseling, recycling and, when he really has to, mopping up at the party store on Franklin. Which might seem like a strange place for a recovering alcoholic to work, but it keeps him honest, and he never accepts money from underage kids looking for someone to buy them a six-pack of Coors the way some homeless do. Or as he prefers to think of it: domestically challenged.

      The noises in the kitchen sound clumsy. Scuffling. Maybe a drunk. Or something else. He crawls out from under the table, feeling for the pepper spray he carries with him. Expired, but you can’t always believe what you read on the side of the box. He has a blade hidden in his walking stick, a jerry-rigged thing he made himself, but pepper spray has always served him better, especially against feral dogs, long as you’re upwind and not backed into a dead end, which he has been in the past, but only once. Thomas Michael Keen learns his lessons quick.

      He moves quietly toward the kitchen, flicking the safety off the spray nozzle, holding it up, facing the intruder. He peeks round the kitchen door. The kitchen is in a state. Cupboards hanging open. Food spilled all over the floor. No way the woman who told him off on her lawn would leave her house like this.

      A furry bandit face pokes out from behind one of the cupboard doors, its mouth matted with bright blood. TK swears. And then the raccoon goes back to licking at the strawberry jelly on the floor, among the shattered remains of the jar that once contained it.

      ‘Go on! Shoo! Get outta here!’

      The raccoon raises its head and looks at him. He runs at it, waving his arms and yelling. ‘Scoot your furry butt!’

      It bristles, and then thinks better of it and dashes for the cat flap. With a swish of cold air and a thwack of plastic, it’s out into the dawn, running for its life. And they both have a story to tell.

      Briefly, TK considers crawling back under the table and going back to sleep until the sun’s up proper, but he’s shot full of adrenaline from the damn critter.

      Hoping against the obvious that it’s gas not electric, he checks the stove, so he can make a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, it’s electric – probably came installed with the house. Worth fifty bucks if he can disconnect it and figure a way to cart it to the junk store. He’s already cataloging in his head.

      But a man’s got to have his caffeine fix, so he spoons in a mouthful of instant coffee mixed with brown sugar and washes it down with water. The faucet sputters and chugs ominously. The city’ll have turned that off too. House like this with three kids probably has a good-size cylinder, though, enough for him to have a wash and a shave and still be able to flush the toilet after he’s done the necessary. You got to live on the streets to appreciate the sheer decadence of that white porcelain flushing commode.

      He was a landlord once upon a time, when he was thirteen and the most together of all the dopeheads. He moved into a deserted building, pulled down the boards, put up curtains, cut the grass, paid a nice Chinese lady a cut to come by once a week to take in the rent money, ’cos who was going to give it to a kid? He got an old electrician to teach him the basics of stealing power from the circuit box without frying himself like an egg, and every time the neighbors went out, they’d fill buckets with water from the garden hose. It worked fine as long as his tenants kept up appearances, looked after the place, but you can’t trust a bunch of dopeheads not to fuck up a good thing. Eventually, they’d started partying on the front lawn, and the neighbors caught on and called the cops, and they’d had to abandon their abandominium.

      He was going to start up someplace else, but then his momma got herself killed, bled to death in his arms, and he got taken off the streets by the justice system. Ten years straight, and then on and off. Prison’s like booze, it’s a tough habit to break. He used to drown the memories with whatever he could get his hands on, which would get him in trouble all over again. Now he’s learned to block it out in his head, like windows boarded up with plywood.

      TK digs in the kitchen cupboards until he finds a bunch of black plastic trash bags, and then heads upstairs to go through every room with care. They’ve packed in a rush, leaving clothes on hangers, others tossed on the floor. He folds everything up and puts it in the bags. A pile for him, one to send to Florrie, leftovers for Ramón to pick through, and the rest they’ll take down to the church.

      He tries on a checked flannel shirt, but the arms are too short. Same with the suit jacket. That’s the trouble with being a big guy. But the red pair of kicks he finds in a box at the back of the closet fit him just fine. Nothing wrong with them either, practically brand-new, apart from the black oil smear over the right toe. He tucks them under his arm and piles up the old broken toys and baby wipes, a half-full tub of nappy-rash cream (everything’s half-full when you’re in asset reclamation), and dumps it in a bag.

      All he needs is to strike it lucky. Find the one house with a suitcase full of money. He could probably buy this place off the bank for what, ten large? Maybe less in this neighborhood. Fix it up, move his sister in, fill it up with his friends, legitimate this time.

      They say possessions tie you down, but maybe not tightly enough, if you look at this town. The sum total of his stuff fits into a shoe box. Photos, a map of Africa, a pair of reading glasses, his AA medals, and an old sixty-minute cassette tape with his family talking on it, made before his little brother died. Cassettes wear out eventually. He knows he should get it digitized. He knows a bit about computers, he’s a self-taught man, but Reverend Alan’s promised to send him on a real course, and that’s the first thing he’s gonna ask them to show him how to do. Photographs, voices – those things are what you pull close when you’re missing connections to people, not fancy sneakers and big-screen TVs.

      The sudden hammering on the door downstairs nearly makes him crap his pants, and he hasn’t even had a chance to use the facilities yet. Maybe the family had a change of heart and called the cops on him. The cops are not kind to stray dogs, even loner ones with more bark than bite.

      He could probably make out the back. He’s already calculating which bags are worth taking with him when he hears Ramón’s voice over the knocking: ‘Yo, let a brother in, it’s cold out!’

      He opens the door on his friend, who looks especially squirrelly today, hunched over a battered shopping cart, glancing up and down the street. His face transforms from skittish mistrust to a huge grin when he sees TK, and he waves the free Tracker phone Obama gives away to people like them so they can apply for jobs. Good for making plans to raid a house too, although Ramón insists on sending elaborately neutral texts in case it does what it says on the box, and the government is tracking them.

      ‘Hey, Papi, got your message. Took me a little while to find a cart. Damn Whole Foods chains ’em up.’

      ‘That’s the problem with gentrification right there, brother. The power’s out, but I found some lunch meat and cheese in the icebox if you want a bite.’

      Ramón

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